Desktops forum: Ram compatibility questions.

Determines:

1. If such works.
2. If one stick will slow down for the other.

There is no "grade" of RAM. They come in speeds and temperature ranges. However I have seen better circuit board artwork...

As to determining what it takes to interface such, unless you dive into electronics headlong, you may just have to read the motherboard guide to RAM or even use Crucial.com

Bob

Strange as it sounds, the memory chips are rolling off about a handful of fab lines in the world today with one chip looking very much like the other.

You must try harder since I won't given the vagueness of your inquiry. You may be searching for something specific. And you may burst into flames that I will not teach electronics or design here. I will help you find out if part B works in your board.

Bob

You didn't reveal you were talking about PC133 ram until your third post. If you are trying to buy that outdated stuff, save your money for a new mobo. No wonder nobody can tell what you are talking about. I do remember problems trying to mix various chip count DIMMs but that was like 1998 or something. Go scrounge a landfill or something so you can play around with combos to your hearts content. For God's sake don't BUY any of it.

The reason your mobo manual is no good is because it was only current on the day it left the factory. No manufacturer bothers to update that info. Email questions for products that are more than 2 years old have very little likelyhood of getting answered either.

And, just for the record: You come off like a beligerent @ss and I am surprised that Calvin will still hang out with you.

"For ram density, if you refer to how much is on a stick, like 128mb vs. 256mb"

*sigh* I specified I was not talking about size.
PLEASE don't make me repeat myself over and over, trying to get as detailed as possible within consideration of asking for technical information I don't have (I mean if you don't understand something its hard to get into the details of it) Yet still not hear what I'm saying.

@proffitt I never asked for you to "teach electronics or design"

Anyways, from inquires elsewhere I have patched together a primitive understanding of the ram density issue. Apparently its all about how much memory is squeezed into the individual chips on a particular piece of module(ram). As time goes on they squeeze more onto the individual chips but I guess older motherboards are unable to use said denser ram. (even though the ram is the right size for the mobo[since it has nothing to do with size!]) Which can cause your mobo to only see half of your ram or worse.

I'm not sure if ram density is more standard (8 chips on a 256mb ram being high density, 16 chips ona 256mb ram being low density?) Or whether ram being "high" or "low" density changes in respect to general increases in ram compactity relative to older motherboards ability to see said level of compactness. Or what level of compactness of ram is compatable with my specific mobo.

One tech person suggested ram density incompatibility issue only applies if you want your ram to clock down (like a 133 on a 100 board) which seems to contradict the admittedly limited information I found elsewhere.

@proffitt
Fine, could you tell me if the 64 MB SDRAM PC133 168 PIN Hyundai - HYM7V63801 I recently bought off of ebay would work on my gigabyte brand ga-7IXE mobo? Whether its too dense/low grade or not? Especially tricky and confusing since http://www.hynix.com/eng/index.html is there homepage, apparently (are they hynix or hyundai, how confusing) and have no listing of that model of ram (and never bothered to reply to my email)

Or could you tell me if said ram would have any incompatibility issues with my current pc133 256mb stick of kingmax tiny bga -MPGB63S-68KI3 with a CL of 2?

How about a PC 133 256mb micron MT16LSDT3264AG? Might that be incompatible with any of the above mentioned?

Do you need majorbrand grade memory or higher to not have issues with a athlon CPU's high bus speed like many memory seller sites have said? What quantifies as "major brand"? I know there are issues with the quality of the material used (like whether its 4 or six layer, gold contacts or not, quality of the board itself etc) and general design (like whether it uses bga or tsop etc)

But absorbing and quantifying such issues and then applying it to a intelligent ram purchase is a major headache, please help.

I do hope I was detailed enough in this post.

Whats that you say? There is no such things as grades of ram you say? Tell that to memory selling sites such as 1stchoicememory.com crucial.com or any other countless number of memory specialists

<i>I will not supply the link to the Gigabyte manual, but a 64MB was noted there. And should be fine with the 256MB stick noted.</i>

As I already clearly said in previous posts, I already read the mobo manual long before posting. As far as "a 64mb" being mentioned there, I seriously doubt that specific stick was mentioned in the manual. If it said it takes 64mb sticks in general, what does that have to do with anything? That doesn't tell me if its compatible with this specific stick. Or whether this specific stick is compatible with my existing ram.

Why is it that you believe the 256mb stick I mentioned would be compatible with my mobo or existing ram?

As far as my "ire", I'm sorry. See, you started off telling be the obvious- the motherboard determines ram compatibility. Then you tell me I'm full of it when I speak of ram grade. Then you suggest that I consult my mobo or crucial.com in such a way as though the possibility of me having already tried both of those didn't strike you as even remotely possible.

Anyways, crucial.com directly contradicts your statement of 'no such thing as ram grade'.

So I am sorry I got irritated when you were trying to help. It doesn't help my "ire" though when you say silly sarcastic things like "I will not supply the link to the Gigabyte manual" especially when I've already clealy stated that I've read the mobo manual.

Your "density" issue if I take it right refers to side-oned or two-sided populated ram sticks. Even, if all one-sided, where all the ram is on one side, the CAS involved is nothing more than "timing". If the timing becomes lost or irregular it'll(system) place wait states to generate overall sync with the system, to include all populated ram slots. One reason to keep any ram sticks from one vender/maker to decrease such issues, keep in a frameset where incompatibility is less to be an problem. I give practical advice rather than any theory or such as that gets into areas I have no need to be in. Yeah, it gets confusing, but don't dwell too much into it, the rewards are slim.

When you buy "namebrand" componets they tend to be uniform in specs and can be counted on to deliver within those. However, alot still depends on the mtrbd. chipset and/or readiness to be stable. I believe in my previous post, I mentioned, two types of ram, generic and namebrand, let me further expand that to include "premium" as well. Premium, being the upmost any vendor can uphold to certain specs and lashingly says so. Namebrand, implies any vendor that is happy to place thier name to thier product, other than ?XYZ123? Ram Co. that pushes out ram product and just calls it a 128mb stick, etc.. If I didn't fully answer your question, I'll quit and leave it to others. I just hope it helps more than hinders your quest.

good luck -----Willy

http://www.simmtester.com/page/memory/

enjoy -----Willy

http://www.attenza.com/techdepot/step/1,,82+23519+37366,00.html
http://www.tvdsb.on.ca/banting/cicp/hardware/PCGuide/ref/ram/tech-c.html
http://www.ocfaq.com/article.php/overclocking/63

Maybe these will be of some help.
Good luck!

I inherited a Compaq Presario with a bad 256Mb PC2700 333Mhz memory card. An upgrade/replacement 512Mb PC2700 333Mhz will cost $20.99. However, I noticed that newer memory is cheaper, i.e. 512Mb PC2-5300 667Mhz is only $14.99. Is the newer RAM backward compatible and does PC2-5300 fit in the same memory slot as PC2700? My theory is that I can spend less for equal performance now, and possibly use the memory on a faster mobo later.

Thanks for the help,
Don

Memory Density CAN NOT be used as criteria why would work or not a memory or to determine the actual quality of the RAM!

"Hi Density" versus "Low Density" is just some arbitrary slang for "I have a fake from an unknown memory non-working problem" just add to the confusion as explain further:
There is no accepted industry definition of "high density" relative to standard or low
density is amateurish and an arbitrary terms to try justifying more a non-working fake!

For Example: SDRAM Density is 1 Gbit for each element memory stick is a valid statement.

However a statement as: SDRAM Density is 1 Gbit for each element memory stick is a valid statement.
See officially at Intel that Density definition as is expressed in numbers of Mbit or Gbit, in this case should be 1 Gbit , dont full around thinking the uninformed people will buy your fake Samsung, se for example at Intel how officially Density is defined (SDRAM Density is 1 Gbit and is not changed and can not be used as criteria):

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d915gvwb/sb/CS-027030.htm

See the last two explanations from this forum (scroll to the bottom):

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:S-U5W4wSMSAJ:hardware.mcse.ms/archive71-2005-10-231861.html+SDRAM+Density+Definition&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us

OR:

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:-mS0zAVneC8J:www.daniweb.com/forums/thread14822-2.html+SDRAM+Density+Definition&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us


Also here we found out why the RAM Density of 1 Gbit (For example) and is not changed and CAN NOT be used as criteria why would work or not or to determine the actual quality of the RAM:

Density is the capacity or size of a DIMM module or the capacity or size of each DRAM unit on a DIMM or RIMM. Density is normally referred to in megabits (Mb) when referring to DRAM units and in megabytes (MB) when referring to an entire DIMM module (see it at):

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:TvWMbKfPq54J:www.computing.net/gaming/wwwboard/forum/2522.html+RAM+Density+Definition&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us